It was a month later before Athanase Tallard came back to Saint-Marc to spend another weekend at home. Ottawa had become a depressing place to him and he was glad to be out of it. There he was at the focal-point of his unpopularity with the other members of parliament from his own province, who still refused to realize that the English-speaking provinces would have imposed conscription on the country even without what he had said to help them. So his stand in favour of a full war program had been completely useless to both sides of the controversy.
At the moment everyone in Ottawa was worried because the war was going badly again. Canadian troops under a British Commander-in-Chief were dying like flies in the mud before Passchendaele. Athanase felt a real resentment against the British, as though they had let him down personally. He had compromised his position with his own people in an effort to make French-Canada agree to conscription, and then the British made a mess like Passchendaele. No wonder the French-Canadian press roared against conscription when they saw thousands of casualties listed as the price of a few acres of mud.
As usual, he felt better now that he was back in Saint-Marc. The ground was dry and hard and the trees were bare, sharply silhouetted against a sky almost winter-blue. The whole country had a waiting aspect. The geese had gone south weeks ago, the fields were manured, the fodder was all in. Any day now, the first snow would come.
After dinner he drove down to Polycarpe Drouin’s general store to buy some tobacco and listen to the men talk. The store was always crowded on Saturday night, and this week it seemed to have even more than its usual quota of customers, for farm-work was at a standstill. Three checker games had been going on for two hours, and when Athanase arrived he noticed that a few of the men were already warmed by whiskey blanc.
Tonight the discussion was not about the war but all about Captain Yardley. Ten days ago he had bought the Dansereau place outright and had moved in immediately. Dansereau had gone to live with his sister’s family down the river. Last Sunday, Yardley had gone to church and sat through the whole of High Mass, though he had not genuflected to the altar or tried to cross himself and had not known when to kneel or when to stand. Afterwards he had been seen entering the presbytery with Father Beaubien, and it was rumoured that he had given the priest twenty dollars for his poor box. The captain came into the store nearly every day and he paid cash for whatever he bought. He spoke French, but with terrible grammar and a queer accent mixed with many English words…worse than an Indian, Polycarpe Drouin said.
Athanase listened to the conversation without any comment. He never mingled with the villagers man to man, and it would have been resented had he tried to do so. Yet whenever he was with them on their own ground a special kind of friendliness established itself; it was as though they recognized each other and confirmed the fact that they were separate branches of the same tree.
Now Athanase realized that those who had met Yardley had not been able to help liking him. They admitted, almost defensively, that he was very different from their notion of an English-Canadian. He was friendly, there was nothing high and mighty about him, he was ready to ask them for advice. Apparently he knew a good deal about farming, and this seemed most peculiar in a sea captain. The priest had already arranged for Pit Gendron to work for him, and Pit said he was a good man for a boss. But the priest had made no comment, and in speaking about the captain to Athanase the men were all cautious and indirect, not committing themselves.
Athanase spent nearly an hour in the store listening to the talk and asking about various members of the men’s families, and then he drove home. As the mare’s shoes clopped along in the dark he smiled to himself. Yardley certainly had a way with him. French-Canadians had salted down the Dansereau fields with their sweat for more than two hundred years; it was bound to seem to the collective instinct of the parish a kind of robbery for a foreigner to take over land like that. But apparently Yardley was going to get away with it. If he lived in Saint-Marc for the rest of his life he would always be regarded a foreigner, but there was no doubt that those who met him wanted to feel free to like him.
Athanase decided he was glad. It was peculiar for a man like Yardley to want to live in a place like Saint-Marc, but no doubt he had a good reason and in time it might be known. Tomorrow he would call upon him formally and make sure they were seen together. Since the priest had made no overt objection, his own acceptance of the captain would more or less settle his status in the parish.
Next morning he selected a heavy walking stick from the rack in the hall and started down the road to Yardley’s place with Paul trotting by his side. Athanase walked vigorously, his long thin legs shooting out fast in nervous strides. It never occurred to him to walk more slowly for the sake of the boy. Paul sniffed the air like a puppy, smelling the smoke from burning brush that had drifted a mile down the wind from the place where Blanchard was clearing away the last debris before snow fell. When they turned off the road they could see their neighbour putting new weather-stripping about the sashes of a window. As they drew closer, Athanase noticed that he was very good with his hands and accustomed to working with them.
Yardley heard their steps and backed down from the step-ladder, turning about with a smile when he reached the ground. He was wearing a turtle-necked sweater and a pair of worn overalls. “Hallo,” he said. “I’d been wondering how you were, Mr. Tallard. Things must be pretty hot in Ottawa these days, judging from the papers. I guess you’re glad to be back.”
Athanase shrugged his shoulders. “Not hot,” he said. “Just stuffy.” He shook hands with the captain. “I got back last night and we thought it was about time to welcome you.”
“Thet’s mighty nice of you.” Yardley dropped his hand onto Paul’s shoulder. “I’ve been watching Paul go by and wishing he’d stop and see me sometimes.” He looked down at the boy’s shy face. “Come on in. I got something to show you.”
The place was bare inside. In what appeared to be the living room a fire of birch logs burned brightly on a large stone hearth. A Quebec heater stood black and gaunt in the middle of the room, with a black stovepipe joining it to the chimney. Large wooden boxes lay on the floor with their tops pried off. There was no furniture except a table and two chairs.
“Not got the place fixed up yet,” Yardley said. He pointed to the boxes and added, “Books. I got a lot of them. Been alone so much, if I didn’t read I guess I’d go crazy. Pretty near learned Shakespeare by heart.”
From a shelf in one corner he picked up a large block of white pine, smooth and carefully planed. “This is going to be yours one day, Paul.”
The boy stared at the wood, not understanding what the captain meant and too shy to say so. His hands opened and closed and then he took the block when Yardley held it out to him.
“When I finish, it’s going to be a three-master. Know what thet is? A full-rigged ship, like we used to build down in Nova Scotia, but what they can’t build there any more. She’ll have a full suit of sails on every mast from the course right up to the skysails when I’m finished with her.” He took the block of wood and put it back on the shelf.
Athanase looked pleased. “But that will take up too much of your time, Captain?”
“Give me something to do winter nights,” Yardley said. “I guess they’ll be long enough, out here.” He turned to the boy again and indicated the open boxes. “How about you taking those books out for me and stacking them on the floor? Me and your father want to talk. Leastways, I got the idea your father wants to talk to me.”
Yardley led the way to the porch and when they were seated on either side of the top step he said, “I like thet boy of yours, Mr. Tallard. Missed having a son myself. You’re fortunate. He’s not the only one you got, is he?”
Athanase was silent for a moment. He got up and they strolled together around a corner of the house toward the barns. “Why do you ask that, Captain?” he said at last. “Some of the people in the village must have been gossiping about my family.”
“No,” Yardley said. “Not to me anyway. I guess I thought I heard you had more than one child.”
“Don’t make a mistake. If anything is really important–something with money in it, something deep inside a family–our people keep their mouths shut like clams.” Realizing that he was sounding mysterious and feeling a little foolish, he added, “I have another son, older than Paul. By an earlier marriage. He’s called Marius. The name was his mother’s idea, not mine. He’s in his first year at the university in Montreal.” Suddenly looking straight into Yardley’s eyes he asked, “Has Marius been out here while I was away?”
Yardley stood balancing on his stick, aware of a tension he did not understand. Behind his glasses his blue eyes were serious. “I wouldn’t even know, Mr. Tallard,” he said. “I guess maybe I shouldn’t have mentioned it.”
Athanase made a gesture of impatience. “It’s nothing. You see–this province, Captain–it’s not an easy place to understand. You English, you say and do what you like and people forget easily. Here nobody ever forgets anything. Most of our people are quiet. They mind their own business and all they want is to be left in peace. But some have never forgotten their grievance against the English, and my elder son is one of them. He’s a nationalist. With the war, and my stand on it…” He stopped abruptly, as though afraid of giving away too much.
They entered the barn together and smelled the sweet odour of stacked hay, the sour stink of manure and disinfectant. Athanase pointed to the loft and then to the stalls with his stick. “I see you bought the whole place, stock and all.”
Yardley nodded. “The stock he had was pretty good. I’ve been thinking I’d try to get together a herd of Jerseys, but I’ll wait and see how things pan out with what I’ve got first.”
They looked through the barn and Yardley indicated the improvements he intended to make. When they emerged into the sunshine again Athanase surveyed him with obvious curiosity. “One thing I’d like to ask, Captain. What brought you to Saint-Marc? Was it McQueen’s idea, or your own?”
“Thet’s a pretty long story, Mr. Tallard. When I sit down nights in front of my fire and start thinking how I got there, I feel mighty queer sometimes.”
Athanase said nothing, sensing the loneliness in the man and respecting it.
“I guess it’s a lot easier,” Yardley went on, “to remember things than to figure out why they happen. A sea-faring man keeps himself steady by thinking he’s got a home some place ashore. But when he goes ashore for good, he generally finds the only home he’s got is the friends he’s made. And man, they’re as like as not scattered all over the whole world.”
“McQueen mentioned your daughter. Is she living in Montreal?”
Yardley’s face softened. “Yes, and two granddaughters. I guess I couldn’t ever get used to living in Montreal, though.”
They came back to the front of the house again, Yardley limping heavily. Paul appeared in the door, opened his mouth to speak, and then shut it again, waiting until the men had stopped talking. Yardley said, “You finished with the books already?”
Paul shook his head. “I left them ’cause the floor makes them dirty and there’s no place else to put them.”
“Guess thet’s right.” Yardley turned to Athanase. “Thet’s a noticing boy you got.” Paul wandered off in the direction of the barn and Yardley took out his pouch, offered it to Athanase, then stuffed his own pipe with tobacco when Tallard refused, and slowly lit it, puffing steadily and completely hiding the flame of the match in his hand.
“I suppose you came out here,” Athanase said, “because it was near your daughter?”
“It don’t even make thet much sense.” Yardley took the pipe from his mouth and held the bowl against the breeze. “Listen, Mr. Tallard, you may think this sounds foolish, but for a long time I’ve wanted to live in Saint-Marc. It wasn’t sensible, but I did.”
“Saint-Marc? How could you ever have heard of the place?”
“Well, it was like this. Thirty-five years ago I was at sea with a fellow from here. He talked about the place so much I…well, I got a picture of it in my mind that stuck. When things got so I couldn’t stand it any more in Montreal, I thought maybe Luke had come back here and I’d be able to see him again.”
Athanase shook his head. “But nobody from this parish has ever gone to sea.”
“You never heard of Luke Bergeron?”
“The graveyard is full of Bergerons. Luc, you said. There was a wild Bergeron once. A long time ago. He disappeared.” He stared at the captain. “You mean you knew him?”
“Certainly did. French Luke, we called him. After a run of two hundred and eighty-seven days out of Halifax once, we found ourselves on the beach in Saigon, Luke and me and the blackest nigger thet ever came out of Barbados–and thet’s an awful black man, Mr. Tallard. Back in 1877, thet was. I was quartermaster then, and Luke was the bosun, and the nigger, he was the cook. Man, were we glad to set foot off thet ship.”
Paul had returned and stood staring at Yardley with his dark eyes very round, his lips parted and his two buck teeth showing white.
“I been alone so much, I talk an awful lot. I noticed thet in Montreal. I’d get talking, and I’d keep on, and when I stopped nobody would say anything. They were smart people, I guess. But living in Montreal they never got to see very much, and they never believed very much either.”
Athanase smiled and looked at Paul. The boy leaned against the porch and kept his eyes on the captain.
“Well, anyhow,” Yardley went on, “when Luke stepped onto the dock in Saigon he was a mighty surprised man, because outside the coolies all the white men talked French. He liked thet. And then one night ashore some of those Frenchmen started riding Luke on the kind of French he talked. They said it was something awful to have to listen to–the same way the Limeys used to make fun of the way I talk–and Luke got sorer and sorer, and then he lit into them. He was a mighty good man with his hands and he could use his feet like a lumberjack, but there was too many of those Frenchmen, and me and Luke and the nigger, we got beat up so bad we couldn’t lift ourselves off the floor when the cops came in. So they put us in the jailhouse. The ship sailed without us, and when we got out of jail we were on the beach. So we signed on a French craft running the China Seas, and we stuck her for four years. This time Luke was the first mate and I was the second, and the nigger, this time he was the bosun. Thet was how I learned to speak French.”
Athanase’s laugh rang out and even Paul laughed, but Yardley kept his face straight and watched them both. “Those four years out East, Luke was a terrible lonesome man,” he said. “He never got any word out of here.”
“If he came from those Bergerons up in the hills,” Athanase said, still smiling, “it’s easy enough to understand. None of them could ever read or write.”
“Luke couldn’t either.” Yardley took out his handkerchief and blew his nose and the noise was so loud he apologized. “Funny thing, me thinking there was a chance of finding him again. But Saint-Marc’s all right anyhow. I wanted a farm some place. When McQueen said he knew you and said where you lived, and I remembered Luke, it all seemed to add up right.”
A silence fell between them and Yardley puffed steadily at his pipe, his eyes looking across the fields and the river road to the water. The Saint Lawrence was the colour of dull steel under a cloudy sky.
Athanase tapped the edge of the porch with his stick. “I’d like to do anything I can for you, Captain. I wish I were here more often and in Ottawa less.” He rose and looked about for Paul, but the boy had disappeared. Yardley got to his feet and they went back inside when Tallard said something about having left his hat.
“It’s mighty kind of you,” Yardley said. “Come to think of it, I guess I stuck my neck out, coming to a place like this. But it’s up to me now. Trouble is, this leg of mine. The doctor told me it was the latest in artificial limbs. But man! Old Long John Silver on his wooden stump could do a better job behind a plough than I can. Lucky thing the priest fixed me up with a good man for the heavy work.”
“Doctors!” Athanase said. “Mine tells me I have the high blood pressure. Life was peaceful before they invented that machine, and there was blood pressure.”
Yardley pulled the two chairs before the fire and they sat on in the bare room, Paul crouched silently in front of the hearth listening while he looked at the glowing embers. The lost hat was forgotten.
“One thing I’d like to ask you man to man, Mr. Tallard. I’m not a Roman Catholic. Does it make a hell of a lot of difference around here, not being a Catholic?”
“Well, Captain,” Athanase said slowly, “this is just like any other parish in Quebec. The priest keeps a tight hold. Myself, I’m Catholic. But I still think the priests hold the people too tightly.” He raised his hand from the stick as it rested between his knees. “Here the Church and the people are almost one and the same thing, and the Church is more than any individual priest’s idea of it. You will never understand Quebec unless you know that. The Church, the people, and the land. Don’t expect anything else in a rural parish.”
In the empty room the glow of the fire brought out the sharp lines of Tallard’s features. His long aquiline nose cast a shadow across one side of his face. His delicately pointed ears were set close to a high and narrow skull. From stiff grey hair, brushed straight back from the upward thrust of the forehead, his face tapered to a long, pointed chin. Had he worn a Vandyke beard he would have resembled Cardinal Richelieu. Tufted eyebrows slanted upward into his forehead. The eyes beneath them were large and brown. They twinkled easily, and when the face was in repose they were sensitive. The mouth was stubborn and ironic. In comparison, Yardley looked plain and workmanlike beside him.
“Your priest here helped me a lot,” Yardley said.
“Father Beaubien works too hard. He worries too much. He has an eye for the length of the girls’ dresses. He sees the devil every time a boy puts his arm around a girl when the moon is full. Right now his new church has put the parish in debt.” Again a quick gesture with his hands. “Me, I like a little pleasure in life.”
Yardley grinned, and Athanase said, “Are you thinking of being converted?”
“No. I wouldn’t feel safe doing a thing like thet. My old father, he whaled the Presbyterian catechism into me when I was a kid, so I’d feel mighty peculiar if I went permanent to another church.”
Athanase laughed aloud and glanced at Paul. “Well, Captain, it will be taken for granted that you’re a heretic in Saint-Marc. You never saw the light. You can’t help yourself.” His smile faded. “But it is serious, this religion in Quebec. Me, I am allowed a little latitude. It is presumed I can think for myself, up to a point.”
The talk drifted on, the fire burned itself out, and no one thought of time. Yardley told Athanase about his daughter, and his voice was wistful as he explained how difficult it had been for him to pick up any threads of intimacy with her after all the years he had been at sea. His wife had wanted Janet to be a fine lady, and when Yardley was given his own ship and some money began to come in, Janet had been sent to a finishing school in Montreal. It had finished her so well Yardley found it hard to realize now that she was his daughter at all. His wife had been dead for a number of years and Janet and her two girls were living with her husband’s family, the Methuens.
Yardley described the place where they lived. It was a huge stone house on the southern slope of Mount Royal. Harvey Methuen’s family was decidedly rich, the money coming from government bonds and stocks in breweries, distilleries, lumber, mines, factories and God knew how big a block of the Canadian Pacific. It was a large family, and every branch of it lived in stone houses with dark rooms hung with wine-red draperies, and they all had great dark paintings on their walls framed in gilded plaster. Yardley said they were so polite he never knew what was in their minds, and Janet was always nervous when he was around, afraid of what he might say next. He insisted that she meant well and still loved him, but he knew it was better for him to live some place where he could be near enough to see her and the children, but not in Montreal. His face softened as he added that maybe Janet would bring his granddaughters to Saint-Marc in the summer for a long visit. Away from the Methuens, he thought she might feel easier with him.
Athanase shook his head up and down as Yardley talked. After a while he said, “Those Methuens are a pretty old family in Canada. I suppose that makes them set in their ways.”
“Well, I don’t know Montreal so well. But I notice this. If a man has anything to do with brewing beer or the C.P.R., it seems he’s something like a duke is in England.”
“He is certainly the big fish in the little puddle. We French, we watch them and smile.” He rose abruptly, looked about, found his hat, and stood with it, gesturing as he went on. “The trouble with this whole country is that it’s divided up into little puddles with big fish in each one of them. I tell you something. Ten years ago I went across the whole of Canada. I saw a lot of things. This country is so new that when you see it for the first time, all of it, and particularly the west, you feel like Columbus and you say to yourself, ‘My God, is all this ours!’ Then you make the trip back. You come across Ontario and you encounter the mind of the maiden aunt. You see the Methodists in Toronto and the Presbyterians in the best streets of Montreal and the Catholics all over Quebec, and nobody understands one damn thing except that he’s better than everyone else. The French are Frencher than France and the English are more British than England ever dared to be. And then you go to Ottawa and you see the Prime Minister with his ear on the ground and his backside hoisted in the air. And, Captain Yardley, you say God damn it!”
Yardley blew his nose loudly and Paul got to his feet and edged around the chair beside him.
“I don’t see why you don’t get out of parliament, Mr. Tallard,” Yardley said. “With your ideas, and with a place here like yours, I wouldn’t think you’d ever want to leave it.”
Athanase shrugged his shoulders and moved to the door. “I’m not important to the land. I just own it. Maybe I’d get bored if I were here all the time. My manager and his men do the real work. You’ve seen Blanchard. He’s a good man.” He added thoughtfully, “Our people feel about the land the way they do in Europe, I think. It would be sentimental to say they love it, but I tell you one true thing–they look after it better than they look after themselves. They hoard it. It was a bold thing, Captain, your moving into a place like Saint-Marc. I hope you won’t regret it.”
Yardley scratched the bristly grey hair behind his right ear. “I got the same kind of feeling myself. Man to man, Mr. Tallard, I put most of what I got into this land. I aimed to stay when I bought it. It’s good land and it suits me.”
Athanase nodded and his lean face was charming as he smiled. “It’s going to turn out all right, Captain. No one is going to make it hard for you here. I give you my word for that. But you may find it lonely. I do myself sometimes. My wife, she finds it lonely all the time.”
They shook hands, each conscious of a real pleasure in the discovery of the other.
“Tell me, Captain. Do you play chess?”
“I certainly do. I even got a set of men I picked up in India with elephants in place of bishops.”
“I prefer bishops. After all, the movement of the piece is diagonal.” His grin was raffish. He followed Paul out the door and on to the porch and then he turned. For a moment he hesitated, and then he said, “Would you have dinner with us tonight? Madame Tallard is eager to meet you. It would make us both a very great pleasure.”
With Yardley’s acceptance of the invitation, the man and the boy went off together the way they had come.
That afternoon it blew cold from the northeast, the wind built itself up, toward evening the air was flecked with a scud of white specks, and then the full weight of the snow began to drive. It whipped the land, greyed it, then turned it white and continued to come down hissing invisibly after dark all night long until mid-morning of the next day. For a few days after that the river was like black ink pouring between the flat whiteness of the plains on either side. Then the frost cracked down harder, the river stilled and froze. Another blizzard came and covered the ice, and then the whole world was so white you could hardly look at it with the naked eye against the glittering sun in the mornings. The farmhouses seemed marooned and silent, and after dark the trees cracked with frost, and there were muffled sounds of animals moving in their stalls. Manure heaps grew outside the barns and stained the snow like iodine on a bandage. For months it was the same.